How to smooth textured walls

Spring 2023 One Room Challenge -Week 4

This week was exciting! I learned how to smooth textured walls. Also, known as skim coating. Was I scared? Yes!  Was it a lot of work? Yes! But I promise it’s totally doable regardless of any skill level.

Week 4 of the Spring 2023 ORC went by quick but we made lots of progress in the gentleman’s bathroom renovation. In the past, I have never had any concerns or issues using peel and stick wallpaper on my textured walls. But for this project, I guess I wanted to get fancy and skimmed coated the walls.

Went to Home Depot and purchased the following items:

• All Purpose Joint Compound

• 10-12 inch taping knife

• Mud pan

• Sanding block

Let’s get ready to smooth these walls….

You may want to prep your area by covering it to avoid any damages or messes. I have tiles on the floors, so I didn’t worry about covering them. I don’t mind having to sweep and mop a hundred times..lol!

The joint compound (drywall mud)I bought is premixed and it can be used as-is. In other words, you don’t need to worry about mixing anything to get the mixture evenly. This drywall mud has the consistency of a creamy paste and it takes awhile to dry; allowing us to have more time to correct any mistake. 

You ready? Let’s go! 

Fill up your mud pan with the joint compound and with your other hand, use your taping knife to get a big scoop of the mud. If you keep the mud pan on one hand and the taping knife on the other, it’s will make the process easier for you. Now that you have the mixture on your taping knife, start spreading it on the walls. Once you have the joint compound on the wall, angle the taping knife and scrape off the excess mud. When you start skimming the walls, the process should feel like you are buttering a slice of bread with your favorite spread. The goal of the whole process is to fill in the holes with the mud where the previous textured was on the wall.

Repeat the process mentioned above and focus on doing one area at a time. This will avoid the compound from drying before skimming off the extra mud. If your walls have a ton of texture, you will probably need to do more than one round of skim coating. Just be sure to let your joint compound dry before doing any additional coats. Pretty easy, right?

If your walls are still not smooth as you would like them to be, you can fix this by sanding the wall down. I purposely layered the mud thinly to avoid having to sand. However, there were some areas that did require some sanding. I used a sanding sponge to buff out the rough patches. You can always bring out the big guy, the Orbital Sander for bigger areas.

Now, that I have shown you how to smooth textured walls, are you ready to give skim coating a try? Trust me, if I can do it, so can you!

Hoping next week we can install the wallpaper. I am sure the other ORC participants have been busy with their projects. Check them out here, you will find some inspiration. Don’t forget to follow me on Instagram to see the latest news.

Ciao!